The Communication, Navigation & Surveillance (CNS) dashboard, which provides reports and statistics on flights and aircraft with certain declared capabilities, was made available to the public in April 2017. It already has 244 users, including 84 air navigation service providers (ANSPs), 12 airports, 17 operators and 19 authorities.

The CNS dashboard analyses the CNS and Performance Based Navigation (PBN) information contained in the ICAO Flight Plans submitted to the Network Manager. Different periods of time, airports, airlines or aircraft types can be analysed. Even though it might not always be accurate and complete, the dashboard is a unique source of useful information for the monitoring of fleet capabilities and the preparation of PBN deployment plans.

Users can visualise the number of flights or aircraft with a particular CNS capability (including Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)) without having in‐depth knowledge of the databases’ structure or advanced software skills for querying the databases. The dashboard also provides an aggregated view of traffic characteristics, instead of just providing lists of flights or aircraft and their capabilities.

The CNS dashboard is one of EUROCONTROL’s tools which help support PBN implementation. It is available through the EUROCONTROL OneSky Online extranet. It will also become accessible through the ePBN Portal, which is currently under development.

Setting up the CNS dashboard

In November 2012, ICAO updated the Flight Plan (FPL) format, incorporating codes for CNS and PBN capabilities. FPL content quickly became an interesting source of information on traffic and fleets, especially in the PBN domain where alternative sources of information are rare.

So, FPL PBN content began to be analysed and documented in bi‐annual reports which were then distributed to stakeholders’ groups for information. The reports generated even more interest and the number of requests for additional, more targeted analysis of traffic increased. It soon became clear that having a tool would help meet this demand and this is where the idea of the CNS dashboard emerged.

Next steps

New features are expected to be integrated into the dashboard by the end of 2017, including periodic automatic reports, extra filters (country of registration and user segmentation), and additional statistics for ANSPs and airports (on aircraft makes and models).

Improvement of the data quality by correlating it with sources of information other than Flight Plans has also been planned for future releases.

Moreover, external users of the tool should soon form a community which will regularly be consulted on their needs and expectations, so that the tool continues to meet requirements.